RSMUS.comModern Family Office: Automate Ownership Consolidations
Family offices must maintain a careful balance between accuracy and efficiency.
At the same time that money managers need to produce reliable numbers, they must also be able to provide reporting and documentation on a consistent cadence. This creates a tension that works against both family offices and their clients.
With traditional tools like Excel and scattered financial management solutions, complex calculations such as ownership consolidations require collecting data from multiple sources and moving it manually between cells and spreadsheets. This process raises the risk of errors and omissions. And when there are frequent or unexpected reporting requests, the risk rises even higher as managers scramble to crunch the numbers on time.
As family wealth rises from $3.3 trillion in 2019 to $9.5 trillion in 2023 and family offices have significantly more assets under management, their reporting requirements will increase proportionally. That will mean doing more ownership consolidations (among others). Providing spotless numbers in a timely manner will be an ongoing obstacle for family offices of all sizes—and the current toolkit is only making the problem worse.
Sage Intacct for Advanced Ownership Consolidations
With a powerful, fully integrated, and cloud-based suite of tools for financial management, Sage Intacct gives family offices a place to collect, organize, and report on their most important data. The platform replaces numerous outdated and underpowered tools, including Excel, with a unified platform for advanced accounting obligations. In so many ways, Sage Intacct helps family offices improve productivity and precision, striking the important but elusive balance.
Ownership consolidations are a prime example. Sage Intacct can automate this process, making the numbers immune to typos and human errors while supplying the correct answers almost instantaneously. If this used to be a time- and labor-intensive process that inspired doubt, the exact opposite is true with Sage Intacct thanks to features like these:
Consolidated Data Sources
As the central repository for all financial data, Sage Intacct stores the current and correct ownership percentages for each entity. That makes the data easy to reference or utilize and ensures that everyone is working with the same set of figures. Previously, these percentages were often stored in Excel, where they could be hard to find, update, or incorporate. With Sage Intacct, that document becomes irrelevant.
Single-Click Calculation
The previous process involved pulling the ownership percentages from the source above, pulling the financials from the accounting system, and then doing each calculation manually. Sage Intact automates the entire process by storing the percentages and financials in the same system, making consolidations as easy as clicking one button. What used to be a difficult and distracting process now takes less than a second.
Multi-Level Rollups
Multi-level organizations involving multiple parent companies only multiply the challenges of getting ownership consolidations right. This was a common point of friction in the past, but not anymore with Sage Intacct. A user simply defines the parent/subsidiary entity ownership structure, then Sage Intacct does the calculations while providing map and tree views of the hierarchy.
Accurate Historical Data
Older and lesser solutions made it difficult to keep accurate historical records as ownership percentages changed, as happens often. Sage Intacct eliminates that issue by keeping complete and accurate records of previous percentages and actuals. As the system of record, Sage Intacct strives to keep an audit trail of everything that’s as easy to set up as it is to access.
| Feature | Pros | Cons |
| Advanced Ownership Consolidation |
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| Statistical Accounts |
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Automate Interest Booking
Needing to calculate non-controlling interest further complicates ownership consolidations. Provided that certain consolidation methods are selected, Sage Intacct will automatically book non-controlling interest, making it an effortless and error-proof process.
Sage Intacct Expertise for Family Office Excellence
Sage Intacct is full of features to help family offices integrate, automate, and optimize key financial processes. And with a partner like RSM that has experts in the technology of Sage Intacct and the business of family offices, it unleashes opportunities to improve on almost everything. For help with ownership consolidations, Sage Intacct, and so much more, contact RSM.
